ABSTRACT
Using a psychoanalytic lens, this chapter explores the deeper human aggressive instincts underlying terrorism. Muslim humiliation and the subsequent desire for retribution against America is one of the driving forces of terrorism. My first-hand community outreach during the Second Chechen War to provide medical aid to Chechens provided a glimpse into this Muslim sense of oppression as a result of war with the more powerful Russian army.
Both the Tsarnaev brothers and Mohammad Atta identified as Muslim, and their desire for violent retribution may have been motivated by a sense of marginalization. The ability to hate can provide a perverted sense of object constancy to terrorists who have suffered a narcissistic injury severe enough to threaten their sense of survival. The terrorist's push is to reconstitute a distorted sense of belonging. They may have unconsciously sought radicalization as an ideological, sacred object to effect an environmental transformation that they deceived themselves into believing would deliver personal change.
Jihadi terrorism unveils an exclusive belief system where deviation results in lethal punishment. Difference threatens its very existence. The Jihadi terrorist merges with “God,” where the enemy becomes the depository of the unconscious rejected parts of self and a negative form of attachment between believer and God.
